Call them neighbours and you are right, one can not help but ponder over the contrast between the 'high-profile' neighbourhood of the Victorian Garden City (VGC) and the Isakaba base make 'shift-settlement' pictured below, otherwise known as Ikota Housing Estate along the Lekki -Peninsula area of Lagos state, Nigeria.
Picture of Ikota Housing estate entrance below:
Picture of Victoria Garden City (VGC) entrance below:
Manor Garden Estate in front of Ikota Housing estate below:
Pearly Gates Estate, close to VGC, Manor Garden and Ikota Housing Estate below:
Ikota Housing Estate:
Ikota Housing estate is one of the low-income settlements relocated over twenty-years ago from Maroko, the area where the prestigious Oriental Hotel, Lagos, and Addax Petroleum is currently situated, along the Lekki Peninsula axis of Lagos state.
As required of well-meaning citizens of a State, of-age (18-years and above) residents of this community perform their civic responsibility by voting during elections, just like their "upper-class" neighbours. The propulsion of this discussion is that while the high-brow and middle class areas get to enjoy some percentage of electoral promises, peharps due to the fact that they have influential individuals living among them; residents of the low-income estates get less than they deserve or might have been promised during electoral campaigns.
Despite past and present government's electoral campaign promises of 'House For All', motor-able roads, healthy drinking water, electricity supplies, quality/ affordable Health-Care schemes' ...the basic amenities that makes life easy, residents of this estate and other poorly planned/ densely populated communities are not seeing the actualisation of most electoral promises.
They live in unplanned and poorly constructed houses with no drainage, toilets/ bathrooms, and proper waste disposal system, as a matter of fact, some construct their houses on dustbins, as seen in the picture above.
They buy drinking water from residents that are lucky to have constructed bore-holes. During the rainy season, this community is dangerously flooded. There is no motor-able road. The only thing peharps going for this people is population because that is what lures most Politicians to these communities during polls.
Why should citizens of any well meaning State, be allowed to live in this deplorable condition while elected government officials at both State and Local government levels appear unperturbed.
The government can do much better than this, and we hope they do.
Obianuju Mbanusi writes
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